


another dimension with(out) you

by mahistrado



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M, Parallel Universes, They're All Gay, do u want to fight?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 03:18:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11027499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahistrado/pseuds/mahistrado
Summary: there are so many other ways this could have gone. a series of other universes occurring at the same time as ‘let’s go b*tches’. [there’s no cursing in this, for those trying to avoid that for ramadhan!]





	another dimension with(out) you

_in another universe, where even can do laundry_

sana sits in front of isak, and he says, “sana, i have to ask you–”

sana stares at him blankly, eyebrows lifted in a performed dismissal. her forehead is tired from holding so much tension lately, but she ignores it. he continues. “why didn’t you tell me you knew–you know even?”

she feels taken aback, a little, but she blinks the surprise out of her eyes and leans back in her chair. she recalls the feelings she had, the ones that wanted to protect even, protect elias, and she swallows down the bits of anger and bitterness that remind her that no one has bothered to afford her the same courtesy. and still: “because i knew that you’d ask and dig around about him.”

“yeah, and what’s so bad about that?”

sana narrows her eyes almost imperceptibly, sorting through all her careful reasons for lying to isak. “i think even should get to choose for himself how much he wants to share about his past,” she says. she pauses, fixing him with a stare. “i mean, do you want to share everything about your past?”

isak stares back for a moment and then softens around the eyes, pressing his palms flat to his textbook and ducking his head. when he looks back up, he says, “you’re a good person.”

his phone chimes with a text, and he looks away to check it, a small smile curling at one edge of his mouth. “wow,” he says, huffing out a laugh and raising his eyebrows. 

“what?” sana asks, jumping on the interruption as casually as she can. it gives her time to tuck away the guilt that’s blooming in her chest before it gets too big and ugly and distracting. 

isak shakes his head, just a small, fond twitch, and holds his phone out for her to read the text.

_All a man has is his word_

_RIP The Get Down 2017_

“he actually did it,” isak explains, running a hand through his hair. “he’s shit at laundry, really, i thought i’d have to do it anyway.”

he seems to be making a massive effort to control the smile playing at his lips, so sana raises her eyebrows at him. “love disgusts me,” she informs him, looking back down at her notes and propping her head up with her cheek pressed to the flat of her fist. 

the words blur together, everything coming to her in a big block of incomprehensible gibberish, the same as it has all week. she focuses in on one sentence, forcing her mind to take in the information. her eyebrows knit together, _some prokaryotes…_

she can feel his eyes on the crown of her head but she keeps her eyes trained down at the book.

 _some prokaryotes, mainly in domain archaea–_ it’s not so much that she can’t read the sentence, but that other things are in the way, taking up all the space. she thinks, _how do i get him out of the room_ , she thinks, _a revenge plot on the eve of ramadhan is messed up_ , she thinks, _mamma will be cooking and wondering where i am soon_ , she thinks, _when did these white girls start making me so unhappy._

 _some prokaryotes, mainly in domain archaea, can live in extreme environments. these organisms have adapted to crushing pressure and oppressive darkness_ –

“sana?”

she jerks out of her thoughts and levels him with a sharp look, sitting up. “yah?”

he fidgets with his pen. “how have you been, lately?” his eyes flick up to meet hers, back down to his notes, and back up again, eyebrows softening their angle. he reminds her of dogs that aren’t sure whether they should trust you, and she feels heat at the back of her neck, shame. “you seem down?”

she opens her mouth to dismiss his concern and it sort of stays there, slightly slack. her eyebrows knit together again. she closes her mouth, curls her hands around the edge of the desk, and lowers her gaze to watch her fingernails turn white under the pressure. 

“mmm,” she hums. it’s not a confirmation or a denial, and she doesn’t look up at him. she reaches for her pencil case for something to do. she sets it down without removing anything. 

she doesn’t really _trust_ isak, because of what he did to eva, and because he has this blatantly feral part of him that will do anything to protect what’s his, and sana’s not stupid enough to think that she falls into that bubble. she knows he’s different now, in the same way that she’s different than she was a year and a half ago, which is to say: slightly less destructive on the outside, and the same amount of scared on the inside.

when she looks up at him, he nods. “yeah, okay. alright. let’s get to work now. _protistas_ before hoes.”

she doesn’t smile, but there’s a part of her that wants to, a little. 

*

_in another universe, where isak goes swimming with jonas_

sana sits at her kitchen table, books splayed across the whole surface. she stares at the text in front of her, knowing she has about an hour and a half left to study before everyone gets home and the chatter of anticipation of ramadhan will make it impossible to take in any more information. 

she sighs, sits back fully in her chair and folds her arms across her chest. it is completely useless and she knows it. she closes her eyes, presses her thumbs against the hollow where her eye socket meets the bridge of her nose. she stays like that for a long time, forcing stillness into her brain, flushing out the simmering rage in the back of her mind, breathing in the familiar scent of her home, soft linen and lingering spices. 

“sana?”

her eyes snap open and she sits back up in her chair abruptly, scooting it incrementally across the tile with the movement.

“yah?” she says sharply, looking at elias hovering in the doorway between the entryway and the kitchen. “what do you want? i’m studying.”

“yeah? you getting it by osmosis or what?” he taps his fingers against the doorframe with an expectant smile.

she rolls her eyes and hunches back over her notes, not bothering to reply and hoping he’d just… go away. exist somewhere not here. not just him, but everything that came with him. the fight. the boys. the stupid sexism that made it perfectly fine for him to be russe while it's tearing her life apart. 

the tapping stops, and she hears elias approach the table. “sana?”

she doesn't answer. the page of her notebook that she's flipped to is well worn because she's handled it so much in the past week. it's the summary of chapter five on respiration, and it’s also the page that noora wrote her password on.

she folds the corner of the page up and pretends to read. elias pulls out the chair opposite her and sits down. 

“ _sana,_ ” he repeats, this time with the darija inflection that mamma uses when she's angry, or fond, or tired, heavy on the n and short on the a’s. “come on. do you need to punch me? i’m tough. you can give me a bloody nose too.”

he reaches across the table to put his hand over her notes, and she swats his hand away immediately, glaring at him. 

“no,” she snaps. she's forgetting what her voice sounds like when she's not snapping at people. it seems like a different life to imagine herself heart full, practically glowing with the force of her joy, less than two weeks ago. 

she holds her glare, resists the urge to soften her face. she's horrified when she feels the hot burn of tears behind her eyes and she looks down immediately, blinks hard once, twice, three times until they go _away_. 

“is this all because—,” he starts, eyebrows furrowing. “because i punched your friend? or is it something else?”

she feels her bottom lip fall into the same juvenile pout she's been trying to train herself out of since she was a kid like it does every time she feels like she's going to cry. she hates it, and she hates it even more right now, hates that she can't even seem to get her own stupid angry stereotype right. 

when she looks at elias lately, she sees isak’s bloody nose; and she sees her reflection in the mirror of the bathroom at the karaoke bar; and she sees yousef ( _under the streetlights in front of her house_ ); and she sees noora ( _smiling at her over the top of her laptop_ ); and she sees them together like a nail through her sternum. then she _blinks_ until she sees elias as himself, but by then he’s too tied up with the rage of her battles with other people to treat him right. 

he deserves to be forgiven, but she _can’t_. because if she forgives him, elias gets to go back to normal, like everyone else. as long as she’s still mad at him, they’ll both remember that _something happened_ , and as long as she’s not alone, she feels a little less crazy for feeling heavy all the time, for wanting to hide and scream and hurt people the way she’s been hurt.

what she really wishes is that she could be mad at everyone else. but the only person she has a real reason to be mad at is elias, and elias is the only person who will still love her for sure after two weeks of getting nothing but biting remarks and eyerolls. 

her eyes burn, and she realizes she’s been been staring so hard at her notebook that she’s forgotten to blink. 

“come on,” elias says, and she can see him leaning in over the table, whining a little. he doesn’t know how to handle not getting what he wants. she doesn’t move. 

he reaches for her hand but stops short of touching her. his hand lands next to hers where it’s pressed flat to her notebook. his voice is gentle, the same one he used to tell her _when you’re sad, i’m sad,_ says, “let’s have it out before ramadhan starts, _khti_.” 

it’s the _khti_ that breaks her. suddenly, she is small again, squished between her two older brothers in the backseat of their car. when baba took turns too fast, she would grab at their hands at her sides to steady herself, and they would never shake her off. she doesn’t mean to be dramatic, but it is dramatic, a little, when a tear falls onto the back of her hand. elias wipes it away with his thumb, curls his fingers over hers. it’s quiet in a way that elias rarely achieves. 

she can’t look at elias, so she fixes her gaze on the curve of his hand over her own, the warmth there. she remembers that he will never let go. 

she says, “yeah, okay.” 

it’s barely above a whisper. her voice feels like she hasn’t used it in ages.

*

_in another universe, where sana doesn’t text isak_

the morning after she read the comment thread on the facebook group, she woke up and stared at the ceiling for 15 minutes until mama came to wake her up. the thought of going to school made her ill, in a way that she hadn’t felt since meeting chris in german class during first year.

 _mamma_ , sana said as fatiha turned to go wake up elias. her voice was strained and she kept her gaze trained on the bumps of plaster above her, gaze blurring them into abstract shapes and patterns. _i can’t go to school._

 _are you sick?_ she asked, concerned. 

sana didn’t want to lie, had done more than enough lying lately, so she told the truth: _i don’t feel well_.

she could tell that fatiha knew she was not sick, and sana saw the exact moment where she moved between the mamma who wanted sana to be responsible and focused, and the mamma who had been asking increasingly pointed questions about how sana was doing for the past two weeks. 

fatiha calls in sick to the clinic and they spend the day together. it’s both peaceful and vibrant in a way that sana has not felt in weeks. they drive to grønland with the new nancy ajram album playing and the windows down, and sana breathes a little easier with every moment that she goes without seeing any blonde-haired, blue-eyed people. 

they browse through fragrant, cramped grocery aisles, filling their cart with dried fruits and spices. they go into a small dress shop that is draped from floor to ceiling in rich jewel tones, sequins sparkling from delicate embroidery across the neck and waistlines of the dresses fitted over the mannequins. sana runs her hand along a skirt made of fabric so deeply blue that it was almost black, overlaid with an iridescent shine.

 _it would suit you_ , fatiha observes from behind her, squeezing sana gently with palms flat against her upper arms. her voice is warm with her fond, honey-sweet smile, and sana rubs the fabric between her fingers. 

her mother is all soft fabrics and warm heart, steady and considered, and the streets filled with her people bustle around her in a dance; brightly painted, loud, abrasive in the way that all proper homes are.

they return home around 14:00, and fatiha immediately gets to work preparing dinner, chattering absentmindedly about what she wants to have prepared to make suhoor easier as she dices vegetables and puts oil to heat in a heavy bottomed skillet. 

sana puts away the rest of their groceries, and goes to her room to hang her new skirt on the hooks mounted behind her door. it looks like the night sky under the dim light of her room, something beautiful, and hers. looking at it makes her heart full in an almost painful way, the opposite of how she’d felt when she woke up. 

when she returns to the kitchen, sana asks, “do you need any help cooking?”

fatiha turns around, raises her eyebrows at sana. “you want to help me cook?”

at her look of surprise, sana can’t help but laugh. it feels fizzy and effervescent in her chest, bubbling out of her and filling the kitchen, sharp and bright. “i want to help you cook!” she insists, walking over and kissing her mother on the cheek, smile still playing on her lips.

“ _mash’Allah,_ ” fatiha murmurs, pressing her temple to sana’s. she winds her arm around sana’s waist and keeps her close. “are you feeling well now, _habibti_?”

sana nods, leaning into her mother’s warmth more firmly when she feels her start to pull away. she takes a breath, closing her eyes. “your advice isn’t dumb, mamma.”

“hm?” fatiha hums, questioning. her palm rubs soothing circles against sana’s back. “is this about before?”

“mmm,” sana says in affirmation, but doesn’t elaborate. they can get into it later. 

she spends a moment longer against fatiha’s side. when they bow their heads close, it feels like prayer. 

*

 _in another universe, where the conflict is different altogether_

eva flops back against sana’s unmade bed, long copper hair splaying out against the mustard yellow bedspread. “ _sa-na_ ,” eva whines, emphatically. “you’re a genius. stop already.”

sana looks over from her desk with amusement, and eva meets her gaze upside down, her face painted with an overblown pout. _despacito_ is playing from eva’s phone next to her head, because sana had refused to let her play it through her speakers. eva has the worst taste in music, and when sana tells her so, she replies, _i make up for it with my taste in girls_ , and something warm and lovely curls in the base of sana’s stomach. 

“please?” eva tries again, hopefully.

sana tucks her chin and stares at her with her best imitation of annoyance, before she breaks, sighing and rolling her eyes fondly. she closes her notebook, and climbs into the bed, sitting with her back against the headboard. she lifts eva’s head so she can rest it on the top of sana’s thighs, her hair contrasting with the black of sana’s leggings. eva hums contentedly, and reaches for sana’s hand. 

“it’s okay that i’m here, right?” she asks, worrying the right corner of her bottom lip with her teeth. 

sana’s eyes flick to her open door, and she can hear mamma bustling in the kitchen and the faint sounds of elias and his friends in the living room. the two weeks since her mother had found a note from eva in the pocket of one of her sweatshirts had been both horrible and wonderful, in the way that things that transform you permanently often are. they had all screamed at each other, mamma, pappa, her, and elias; raw and ugly late into the evening, the holy month looming over their shoulders. mamma and pappa all but disappeared for a week, ghosts of their former presence through the house.

but this morning before school, pappa had exchanged a look with her mother before he placed his coffee on the table. then, he asked, _do you want to invite your–,_ he paused, pursing his lips together before continuing, _friend, eva, for dinner tonight?_

“they asked you to come,” sana reminds her. a small smile replaces the worry after that, and eva settles comfortably against sana’s legs.

“i know,” eva says, half sigh. “it’s just–it’s so nice. shouldn’t they be more mad?”

sana shrugs, brushing a stray strand of eva’s hair off of her face. “they’re not–,” she starts, trying to find the right words. she looks at her prayer rug, eyes blurring across the ornate pattern. “it’s not _mad_. they’re scared. they’re worried for me. my soul.”

eva hums in acknowledgement, but sana thinks she doesn’t fully understand the difference. sana looks into eva’s soft features, her lashes fanned out against her cheek as she looks down at their interlaced fingers running the pad of her thumb over the smooth curve of sana’s nail. 

“my soul is fine, though,” sana says, more to herself than to eva.

she thinks about the way that holding eva’s hand makes her feel like the truest version of herself, makes her feel brave and beautiful and capable. she thinks about her relationship with Allah, the limitless love that she feels from her god, the abundance of it filling her to bursting with the certainty that she had no reason to fear the truth of who she was.

eva laughs at that, squeezes her hand. “ _ja_ , i know that for sure. duh.”

**Author's Note:**

> chatz w me @ mahistrado


End file.
